A recent study asked 7,000 university students in 37 countries to evaluate 40 names to choose the greatest heroes and villains in world history.

On the positive side, respondents chose Albert Einstein as the leading hero of all-time; Jesus Christ ranked sixth. On the negative side, Adolph Hitler earned the greatest villain title, with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein his runners up.

But on the list of top villains, just a notch better than Saddam and even worse than Stalin and Mao, was George W. Bush! Given the more than 70 million murders Stalin and Mao combined to commit, it’s shocking that college students rate Bush as even worse. After all, those same students ranked Bush’s foes Saddam and Osama as even more evil.

This survey highlights the irrational hatred of the 43rd president that continues to flourish around the world, even as his standing in the USA seems somewhat improved.

More to Consider

Comments (18)

I think this shows just how effective the left’s propaganda machine is. When they decide to go after someone, the results can be devastating. Look how they destroyed Sara Palin. They have figured out how to effectively destroy someone if they decide to. Sad.

@ Kay Thomas, Sara Palin didn’t need any help destroying her career.. she did it all on her own. And Bush is as bad as Stalin….I wouldn’t say worse. Took away many of Americas freedoms i.e., Patriot Act, Enhanced Interrogation Techniques that didn’t work. The man stood before the American people and lied “This country does not torture detainees” pffffft. He and Chaney and Rumsfeld are poor excuses for so called leaders

Your opinions of the above people are certainly your right, buts if you can’t see the lopsided reporting employed used by the left, you are choosing not to look. Two hundred reporters sent to Wasilla to try to dig up stuff on Sara Palin, really? While none sent to check out some of Obama’s rather shady associations. One reporter even buying the house next door to the Palin’s. Don’t vote for her if you don’t like her, but don’t buy all the garbage put out by our rather biased media either. To even compare Bush, Chaney,or Rumsfeld to Stalin, shows a clear lack to understanding of history and total indoctrination by the propaganda put out by the left.

I’m glad to see that you’re concerned about American’s losing their freedoms. Are you more concerned about having to occasionally remove your shoes when boarding a plane or the constant, almost daily lack of freedom we experience when Big Gov’t forces us to comply with the Individual Mandate, income taxes, property taxes, death taxes, payroll taxes, minimum wage laws, Title IX, affirmative action, maternity leave, etc….as well as the hundreds of thousands of freedom-killing/economy suffocating regulations spewing forth from the FDA, EPA, HHS, OSHA, FCC, FDIC, NLRB, ICC, FTC, EEOC….?

Julie, Are you really that ignorant of history or are do you have Progressivist Insanity Disorder? Even if Bush was a really lousy POTUS, Stalin murdered millions of dissidents. If you were a citizen of Stalinist USSR and you made a public statement toward him like you just did against Bush, you would get sent to the Gulag for several years of torturous labor before you died.

As Stalin would say, you’re a “Useful Idiot.” Useful to further the propaganda of the Left, but nonetheless an idiot for even putting George W. Bush on the same level as a Stalin. It shows your utter ignorance of history … another victim of our mainstream media and dumbing down of our schools and universities when it comes to learning history.

FOX News interviews young people (mostly college age) across the nation asking them questions regarding history, politics, etc. It is mind-boggling how few young people know current events, the identities of our legislators, etc. So–it does not surprise me that Julie has no in-depth understanding of Stalin, who embodied pure “evil”. The heinous deeds of this unscrupulous villain must have escaped her formal education. He wantonly murdered countless numbers of men, women and children. He was a butcher of the first order. Let’s pray for Julie.

No, George W Bush was not worse than Joseph Stalin. To compare the two is absurd. George W Bush was a mostly terrible president, with a miserable record, who bungled horribly a “good war” (Afghanistan) and launched another unsuccessful “bad war” (Iraq) for reasons which even today are difficult to explain, even to his supporters. He was not, however, the satanic monster that Joseph Stalin was. Stalin had the blood of tens of millions of murdered victims on his hands. Most were killed not due to actions of war (too many leaders are guilty of that), or genocide (a la Hitler, Milosevic, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, etc), but could be attributed solely to his maniacal paranoia. He actually weakened his Soviet Empire through his pitiless purges, not strengthened it as his modern day supporters in Russia (I’m talking to you, Mr. Putin) tend to claim. Some dictators murder for power, some mafiosi gangsters murder for money – Stalin murdered out of suspicion that someone might one day, perhaps, maybe, well-you-never-know, oppose him. He murdered people who loved him and killed for him and would have died for him. He was a beast.

History knows few worse human beings than the likes of Joseph Stalin.

However, as true as that is the Soviet Union would not have been victorious in World War Two without him.

P.S. To even mention the likes of Sarah Palin in an otherwise serious discussion is insulting to those whom can read and write. The quicker the Republican Party sweeps her memory under the rug to never be mentioned again, the better. Her promotion to vice presidential candidate by John McCain was an embarrassingly bad decision made out of desperation in at attempt to win an election he never had a chance in.

This is not too surprising seeing as it was students from over 37 countries. I am not saying that U.S. students are far better educated or anything by any means but it is even more common in some countries then it is here to downplay and simply not describe accurately the damage that Stalin and Mao did to their respective peoples. When you really know the history, even if Bush stole a lot of freedoms, lied to the American people and killed lets say a million Americans, both Stalin and Mao did all three of those things to the tenth power at least to their people so it doesn’t even compare. The students in the survey are just ignorant that’s all, if they really knew what each of the leaders had really done they probably wouldn’t rank Bush very high but they would rank Stalin and Mao a lot lower on the list I am sure.

Please help san diego listen to the Medved Show. The Davis/Boze incompetence caused KCBQ to cancel the last hour of the Medved Show. We no longer get Call of the Week, Disagreement Day, and Open Mind Friday. Please call the asst program director at 1(888)344-1170 between the hours of 6 and 9 am and demand the Medved Show,